Cristal Clear WMV videos with Vegas ... how?
 

Any sugestion how to get cristal clear 1280x720 WMV videos?

I need files around 4,5MB per 10 seconds ...

Any sugestion on effects and render propriets?

Thanks,

Have you downloaded Windows Media Encoder and tried? It is a free software.

Im using Vegas ...

Render your file to an avi, then use Windows Media Encoder to pump out the wmv for you.

Stephen, I had read somewhere (unfortunately couldn't find the reference) that Sony Vegas uses the same rendering engine for WMV as used by Windows Media Encoder. If that's the case, I have doubts that a render out to AVI from Vegas then a second render through WME would have any benefit, and could possibly make it slightly worse. Thoughts?

I have had very good results rendering from the default WMV 720p template. Have you or Henrique had different experiences?

The renderer in Vegas does take a hell of a long time to render WMV.

4.5 megabytes per 10 seconds works out to a combined audio and video bitrate of 3.6 megabits/second. That's high enough to produce fairly decent looking .WMV files. There is nothing particularly special about Windows Media Encoder, it is just a front-end for the same Windows Media codecs that Vegas is using. If your clips have a lot of noise, detail or lots of motion, then 3.6megabits/sec might not produce the "crystal clear" video which you seek. On the other hand, if the video is free of noise and isn't a racing video or skateboard video, then it might work out well.

The final filesize of the video is determined entirely by the bitrate. There are two methods of encoding, CBR (constant bit rate) and VBR (variable bit rate), VBR will give you the best looking results. Try using 2-pass VBR with an average of 3.4 megabits and a peak value of 6.8 for the video and 128k for the audio.

John

All good advice above. I've used the Windows Media Encoder (WME) extensively, as well as Vegas output.

Pull out WME when you need a control that Vegas doesn't expose - such as wide screen flags, pixel aspect ratio, etc. WME has them all. Otherwise, as pointed out above, quality is the same.

Use John's figures to create a custom template and see how it looks to you.

Working on a tripod with good exposure is pretty important to getting maximum performance out of a streaming codec like WMV.

Thanks for the adcive John Cline, I dont see 2-pass option with variable bite rate ... But I found one VBR where I can set the peak. Also, there is a field called peak buffer size (sec), default 20, what do you recomend ?

In my experience I find the default "Preview in Player" under Tools to deliver stunning, crystal clear clarity video (Cineform) which also by default pop up in my Windows Media Viewer as a temp file. All I do, if I want to hold on to it for presentations, is to save it on my HD. If you haven't tried this it's worth the experiment; I cannot get anything in Vegas this gorgeous in any other way.

My movies seems blurry, fuzzy ... I dont know if its my cam, but I think a FX-1 on a very good lightining could be doing something more crips, sharp, clear and with nice colours ...

Here is a sample of my movies now with John Cline settings + unsharpen mask and sharpen:
http://blog.nichecastle.com/sample.wmv

Without any effect:
http://blog.nichecastle.com/sample2.wmv

Handheld camera work is not the best beginning for web distribution.

The WMV will dedicate bits to whatever is moving in the shot. With a handheld camera, every pixel is changing in every frame.

With a tripod shot, only the subject is moving - she'll get more bits, therefore better definition.

I'd also suggest color correcting specifically for WMV, you should be able to get what you want.

Why this is all happening is simple - to get from the 25Mbps that your camera recorded to the 3.82Mbps of your samples you're throwing away 85% of the data. Welcome to web video!

Thanks, I will try use a tripod more often but will be hard to the kind of shot I do.

You said the WMV will dedicate bits to whatever is moving, will be the same with other formats? Any other format I could be using that will produce same size and better quality than WMV?

Will try play a bit with colour correction ...

What other editing softwares you guys recommend for internet? Im actually using Premier to export a High Biterate file than the web formats with Pro Coder 2. Quality is about what Im getting with Vegas but its too much time consuming usign 2 softwares to export.

Perhaps it would be easier to make 960x540 progressive .WMV files. I suspect that some of the blurry/fuzzy issue is due to 1080i to 720p conversion. A single field of 1080i is only 540 pixels high, you are having to upscale that to 720, creating information that wasn't there to begin with. If you use 960x540, you are not having to do this. You also have a bit smaller frame than 1280x720 and can get much higher quality from a fixed bitrate.

You get better vertical resolution in 720p. And using field interpolated 60p also helps because the human eye virtually increases the resolution.

the lighting is a bit weak too, background is too strong (windows) , while foreground is too dark. "crystal clear" is often only a perception of mind. look at some shot from "Bikini destination" they always looks sharp.
for example, your interior is "fuzzy", lots of things with many details. (on the right).
lots of reflections (use a polarizer) and moving shadows (bad for compression, diffuse your lights)
your subject (the guy ?) is lost in the background. the red stuff looks flat, because the blue windows.
there are too many shadows on the skin (light from under would be great in that case)
uniform colors for wall, green plants as props are great stuff.
you can also remove noise from video to get better compression.
virtualdub as lot of filter for this (especially the neat video plugin).
you should post a 5 sec original file so i can show you how to do it.

Thanks John Cline, tried your tips and quality improved on 960x540. Im just affraid because we advise on our sites we got "HD" videos (not really hd quality but resolution) and Im afraid this will affect our sales. What about 1440x1080i? I see media player play fines on full performance but distort the video on low performance. Am I going to have problems with some surfers not playing fine this resolution? Quality will be better since I will not convert to 720?

Jack Zhang, where I can set it to 60p? I cant find in vegas ...


Giroud Francois, thanks for the great tips, I will put a raw file for you shortly.

I think anyone on the Internet would consider 960x540 to be "HD." Technically, anything that isn't SD at 720x480 would be HD. 1440x1080i is out of the question unless someone has a REALLY fast Internet connection. The same goes for 60p.

I still think that 960x540 is your "sweet spot" and is a good compromise between image quality, filesize and bandwidth required to view it over the Internet.

I shoot with an FX1 and edit on Vegas and find that the 960X540 frame size is the best overall HD size for anything that will ever be viewed on a computer.

Like John said before, HD is anything over 480, so you technically are correct and frankly, I think your clients are there for subject matter and good clean video. Frame size is not something they are likely to complain about (I wouldn't think).

Jon

You guys got some really nice points and I will give it a try. 960x540 should be the way I will be going to, thanks ...

Giroud, Im still finding a software to split mpeg2, Im not with the tape of this movie on my hand, if I cant find any till the end of the day I will put a link to another raw video. Thanks